Independent Project

You will be conducting an independent research project for this class, presenting some topic from Number Theory that we don't have time to cover in class.  There will be six of these projects, five of these consisting of pairs of students, and one solo project.  We have a list of suggested topics below.  You will submit a short written report (3 or 4 pages) (one report per project), and also give a 30 minute oral presentation to the class. These presentations will take place on Wednesday, November 16th during our Number Theory Extravaganza -- lunch will be included!.  You might want plan on working on this project during the second weekend of the block!  Please speak to one of us about your choice of topics. We'd like different projects for each project team -- first come, first served.  Many of these topics are mentioned in our text; you should have at least one hardcopy sources aside from the text; there are of course also good resources on the web. Here are some possible topics:

• Perfect Numbers (even and odd)

• Finding big primes (Mersenne primes and GIMPS)

• Fibonacci Numbers and the Golden Ratio

• Continued Fractions and Pell's Equation

• Primes in arithmetic progression

• Factorization methods

• Primality Testing

• Bertrand's Postulate

• Something else you find interesting!

Here are the projects that the class has chosen:

1. Jenna:  Perfect numbers (even and odd)

2. Maija & Amy:  Primes in arithmetic progression

3. Sarah & Tra:  Fibonacci numbers and the Golden Ratio

4. Brittney & Devon:  Primality Testing

5. Andrea & Alex:  Cryptography

6. Max & Peter:  Factorization

Your written report will be done in LaTeX.  Here is a pdf version of the handout about LaTeX we distributed in class.  You can find a copy of the TeX file for this document on the J: drive on the network (look in Anderson folder inside the Math folder).  You will also find a short template file that gives you the basic structure for building your own LaTeX file;  you should of course save that in your own space on the network. 

For lots of information about TeX, you can visit the TeX Users Group website TUG. 

Here are some annoying details about WinEdt. 

1. This program is installed on the computers in the Math Lounge area, and also on the first four machines in the Math Computer Lab (TSC 213).  It is not available on other machines.

2. There is an annoying error that crops up, related to the limited write permissions users have on these machines.  This is not serious, since you will be able to write to your own network drive space.  But when you first open WinEdt, go to the Project menu, and close the current project.  The machine will then not try to write to the C: drive. 

3. There is also an annoying popup Window that comes up, reminding you to register this copy of WinEdt.  This is also a networking glitch.  Just close this window and have at it!